


it's gravity (keeping you with me)

by lazyfish



Series: swaying as the room burned down [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Not Actually Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22227730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: Bobbi gets Hanahaki disease.
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse
Series: swaying as the room burned down [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1284449
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	it's gravity (keeping you with me)

**Author's Note:**

> So, almost a year ago I wrote a fic about Hunter getting Hanahaki disease, and [TomatoBookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomatoBookworm) said something in the comments I couldn't let go of about Bobbi possibly having Hanahaki disease as well. So, here we are, with the companion fic. Most of this overlaps with the previous works, just shows it all from Bobbi's perspective. Enjoy!

Bobbi doesn’t look back. It’s dangerous, and it’s sentimental, and it’s stupid. Bobbi is none of those things. When she files for divorce, she doesn’t look back. She doesn’t think about her ex-husband - or at least, that’s what she tells herself. Sometimes her mind will betray her, but for the most part she can avoid thinking about Hunter. She has a job that keeps her busy and… well, she has a job that keeps her busy.

It’s funny, how the moment her job goes to shit she thinks of Hunter. Her first instinct when HYDRA is swarming around her isn’t to kill the bastards. Her first instinct is to call Hunter to make sure he’s alright. The world is on fire, but if Hunter is okay, Bobbi will find a way to be okay too. 

Killing the bastards is definitely on the agenda, though.

Bobbi gives Izzy the keychain, not knowing it will be the last time she sees her friend alive. If she had known, maybe she would’ve done something differently. As it is, though, she can’t look back.

\---

Infiltrating HYDRA makes her a little sick to her stomach, if she’s honest. She doesn’t like even pretending to believe the same thing as the cephalopod-obsessed weirdos, and Bobbi’s almost pleased that Jemma blew her cover, because it means they can get the hell out of there. 

Seeing Mack again is a welcome relief.

Seeing Hunter again is not, because it is looking back. It is looking back on every sunkissed day she spent with her head in his lap and every star-bright night she spent in his bed and his arms. Even when they’re bickering, she remembers the good times more than the bad. It’s horribly inconvenient.

They travel to Belgium together, and it’s strange how much this mission feels like a memory. They hadn’t ever done something like this together - all of the missions he had tagged along for had been much less straightforward than going in and kicking some ass - but now Bobbi wishes they had.

He has the keychain. He’s kept the keychain. Bobbi’s heart lurches, and she knows then she can’t let him go. She gives him a roundabout invitation to stick around; asking him outright feels like weakness, and she can’t have that. 

She can’t have him leaving, either.

\---

The dance is an old one, but it’s comforting in its familiarity. Tugging Hunter into the backseat of an SUV is just like all the times she’s tugged him into some shady bar bathroom or darkened alleyway or any other place that gives the barest semblance of privacy.

They’re crowded together, a mess of awkward elbows and knees and fumbling fingers, and for the first time since the divorce, Bobbi feels alive.

She feels alive right up until when she stumbles back to her room, alone, and coughs up a single flower petal.

She’s alive right up until she’s dying. For Hunter, it’s only about sex. She knows it’s only about sex, knows he can’t love her around all the hate. When she divorced him she never had any delusions he would forgive her for it, but she’d also never believed they’d cross paths again. Now she’s pissed at her past self for believing she could ever stay away from him. Now she’s left with the person she loves (because fuck it, she can fool everyone else but she can’t fool herself about how she feels about Hunter) who will never be able to love her back. And it’s her own damn fault.

Bobbi stares at the petal as if looking at it long enough will make it disappear. It’s bright yellow, a shape she doesn’t recognize, and small enough to crush easily beneath the heel of her shoe. Erasing the evidence won’t erase the disease that’s begun festering in her body, but it does give Bobbi a rush of vicious pleasure.

So maybe she’s a masochist. So maybe she’s going to walk right back into Hunter’s arms the moment he opens them. So, so, so -

Bobbi’s always known she was going to die young. This is as good a way to go as any.

\---

The first time she coughs up an entire flower is almost a month later, and Bobbi goes to Daisy with it. The mysterious yellow flower feels familiar, but she can’t pin why. The hope is Daisy will have something enlightening to say, since her botanical knowledge _has_ to outstrip Bobbi’s, right?

“Dude,” Daisy snorts. “I didn’t just get a plant encyclopedia transplanted into my brain when I changed my name. You know that, right?”

Bobbi sighs. “Can’t you hack it?”

“Hack a flower?” Daisy looks at her like she’s crazy, and okay, maybe Bobbi _is_ a little crazy for suggesting something so dumb. She had just thought maybe there would be a way to reverse image search or something. “Just ask Jemma.”

“Jemma’s a biochemist.”

“Yeah, and flowers are a part of biology, right?”

Bobbi pointedly doesn’t mention that she has a doctorate in biology, too, and plant biology was maybe the most useless class she’d taken. Instead she collects the flower carefully - she doesn’t want to have to cough up another one before she gets answers - and departs for Jemma’s lab.

When she’s halfway there, Bobbi begins to reconsider her approach. She doesn’t know as much about Hanahaki as she probably should, but she does know the flowers mean something about the reason the disease developed in the first place. Does she _want_ to know what this flower means? 

For all her flaws, one of them is not willing ignorance. Bobbi finishes her journey to the lab, and finds Jemma at her bench, along with a pile of green pills the other woman is examining closely.

“What are those?” Bobbi asks, flower momentarily forgotten in the face of scientific curiosity.

“They’re an experimental cure for Hanahaki disease,” Jemma says crisply. “Can I help you?”

Bobbi almost recoils. Who the hell else has Hanahaki disease? She mentally pages through her list of team members. Mack is definitely not it. Same with Hunter. If it was Jemma herself she probably wouldn’t have been honest about it. Maybe Fitz? That would make sense. Bobbi doesn’t push the line of questioning further, though; Jemma’ll cite doctor-patient confidentiality and then be in a poorer mood.

“I found this flower on the floor of the common room,” Bobbi lies smoothly, handing over the specimen bag she’d put the flower in when she’d first coughed it up. “I was wondering if I should be worried.”

“You said you found this in the common room?” Jemma repeats, pulling the flower closer to her. Bobbi nods, watching Jemma look at the flower. She pulls it out of the specimen bag with gloved hands and inspects it for about a minute before punching something into her computer.

“Does this look like a match to you?” Jemma asks, turning the laptop around to face Bobbi. She squints down at the screen before nodding. It’s a near-replica of the whole flower on the bench in front of them, and has the strange almost-fringed edges of the petals Bobbi’s been coughing up.

“The scientific name is _Coreopsis lancelota_ \- common name lanceleaf coreopsis. It’s a wildflower common in most of the southern United States - Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina are where it’s most prevalent, though it can be found as far north as Maryland. It’s odd that any would be growing in Massachusetts, especially at this time of year.” Jemma bites her lip. “Do you mind if I keep this? I don’t believe it’s dangerous but I’d like to run a few more tests.”

Bobbi nods, her head spinning slightly. 

Lanceleaf. Lance. It’s not much of a stretch at all to make, to connect the flower with the person. A wildflower, too - that’s her Hunter if any flower is. She’s not even going to think about the flower being native to _Georgia_ , of all places. 

“Thanks, Jemma,” Bobbi chokes out before turning tail and retreating.

Knowing the flowers are for Lance shouldn’t change anything. It’s not like there’s anyone else she’s ever loved enough to die for. But the moment she’s back in her room, Bobbi coughs up a fistful of flowers, and she knows everything has changed anyways.

\---

Knowing Hunter doesn’t love her is a fever she’s learned to live with.

What hurts like hell is seeing him love someone else.

At first Bobbi thought she was just being paranoid - Hunter _is_ sleeping with her, after all, and he’s not the sort to be in two people’s beds at once - but as time drags on it becomes achingly obvious her ex-husband is in love with Jemma Simmons.

They have conversations under their breaths almost every time they’re together, and those conversations mysteriously stop every time she walks into the room. There are “secret” meetings. The two of them have entire conversations with single looks, and for the first time in her life, Bobbi can’t read Hunter.

He has sex with her, but it’s not the same. Hunter allows her to cuddle into him and tease him, but won’t ever initiate anything emotionally intimate himself. It’s like he wants her to be close, but not close _enough_. 

She keeps trying to tell herself she understands. If she was in love with someone else, she wouldn’t want her ex snuggling up to her, either. But it hurts - hurts just as much as the flowers rooting in her lungs.

\---

“I know your secret,” Jemma says abruptly one day when they’re alone in the lab together.

“Sorry?”

“I ran a DNA test on the flower you gave me,” Jemma explains.

Oh, shit. “And you found my DNA on it.” It’s the only logical conclusion from Jemma’s original declaration. The flower had grown in Bobbi’s lung; of course her DNA was all over it.

Jemma nods.

There’s nothing else for Bobbi to say. Is she supposed to apologize for being in love with the man who’s in love with Jemma? Is she supposed to explain herself?

“...I can help, if you want,” Jemma offers.

“I’ll think about it.” She’s not sure it’ll make much of a difference. Maybe she’d miscalculated and Hunter doesn’t hate her anymore, but he sure as hell doesn’t love her. He’ll never be able to love her again, and it’s her fault, and she has to live with the consequences of her actions.

Jemma _looks_ at her, and Bobbi wants to ask what the look means, but she can’t - she’s too busy coughing.

\---

The day she finds the pills, everything makes sense.

Hunter is in love with Jemma, but Jemma doesn’t know. It’s why she hadn’t been horribly angry with Bobbi about pining for Hunter - Jemma didn’t realize Hunter was mad for her. Bobbi wonders what story Hunter had sold Jemma to get her to give him the pills he needed. She doesn’t really care anymore. Hunter’s heart belongs to someone else, so much so he’s choking on flowers for her.

The pain reaches a horrible crescendo. Hunter won’t even tell her the truth anymore, not even when it’s so obvious Bobbi wants to scream, so she does the only thing she can; she leaves.

She wants him. She wants him so badly she’s coughing up flowers with his name written all over them, and he’s fallen so hard for Jemma that just months after meeting her he’s caught a disease that will kill him.

It’s not fair. Bobbi clutches a pillow close to her chest and cries, and cries, and cries, because it’s not _fair_. 

Once upon a time, he had loved her like that, so deeply he would risk everything for him. Their love story had never been a fairy tale, and Bobbi has never expected a happily ever after, but this is the worst kind of cruelty. She’s become the sort of woman who cries for a man, who dies for a man, and it doesn’t feel like her.

But it is her, and she has the flowers to prove it.

\---

“This is your fault!” Bobbi doesn’t want to cry any more than she already has, but the man she loves is in a hospital bed, lungs too full of flowers to breathe. Hunter can’t die. Hunter can’t leave her - she needs him too much.

“My fault?” Jemma asks, brow furrowing.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Simmons. He got the disease after we came back from HYDRA, remember? And God knows he’s not in love with me -”

“ _What_?” Jemma interrupts. “You’d sooner believe he fell in love with me than he’s still in love with you?”

“Hunter hasn’t been in love with me for - for years!” Bobbi insists, rubbing at her eyes angrily so the tears won’t spill over. 

“You’re being stupid, Bobbi,” Jemma says flatly. “He’s in love with _you_.”

“He’s not!”

“He is, and you’re just afraid to accept it!”

Bobbi steps backward.

“That can’t be right.”

“You know it is,” Jemma says, shaking her head.

Bobbi closes her eyes, trying to calm herself. It can’t be right. It can’t be right, but the more she turns the words over in her head, the more sense they make. Hunter hadn’t been keeping her at arm’s length because he was in love with someone else - he had been doing it because he was dying.

He was still dying. But she could fix that, and maybe fix the uncomfortable tightness in her own chest while she was at it.

\---

“I love you too,” Hunter says, and her lungs are clear again.

“Yeah?” she croaks. She can’t believe this, can’t believe the whole time the answer was right in front of her and she had been too stubborn to realize it.

“Yeah.”

She leans down to kiss him again, tears still dripping down her cheeks. There’s so much she wants to say to him, but she starts with possibly the worst item on the list -

“Lanceleaf coreopsis.”

“What?” Hunter asks, pushing up onto his elbows. Bobbi puts a hand on the center of his chest, urging him back down into the bed. The flowers are gone now, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be able to do everything at once.

“You are lanceleaf coreopsis. It’s a kind of wildflower.”

Understanding dawns in Hunter’s eyes. “Bob, no.”

“We are such messes,” she sniffs, wiping at her eyes. What other _idiots_ would both be dying over unrequited love that wasn’t actually unrequited at all?

“I love your mess,” he says automatically. “I don’t want any other mess.”

“Me too, sweetheart.” She runs a hand down his cheek, his stubble scraping against her palm. “But I’m thinking maybe we should work a bit on the mess part.”

“I’ll work on whatever you want,” Hunter promises. He tries to sit up again, and Bobbi pushes him down again. It takes some doing, but she manages to curl up in the hospital bed next to him, and that keeps him from a third attempt at getting upright. “As long as you stay with me.”

“Of course I’ll stay with you,” Bobbi whispers. It’s not like leaving is an option, after everything they’ve been through.

“Good.” He brushes his thumb along her lower lid, wiping away the last of the tears. “I love you.”

They’ve said the words so many times in the last ten minutes, but Bobbi doesn’t mind - each time they feel new. 

“I love you too.”

Maybe this isn’t a happily ever after, but it feels enough like one that Bobbi doesn’t mind. 


End file.
